Mick Fanning Misses Out On Fairytale Finish

Australian surfer Mick Fanning just rode his last break in a world championship.

Fanning in 2010.

Getty Images

The three-time world champ made his way to the final of the Rip Curl Pro at Victoria’s Bells Beach, but lost on April 5 to Brazil’s Italo Ferreira, 23.

He announced in February the event would be his last as a competitive surfer.

"The tour has given me so much, but I need a fresh challenge," the 36 year old said in a statement.

Of winning the tournament, Fanning had said he was “not too fussed … I just want to go out there and put on a good performance.”

There were plenty of those in his lauded career. Fanning first rose to prominence as a 19 year old in 2001, winning his first World Tour event at Bells Beach, dedicating the win to his brother, Sean, who died in a car accident in 1998.

He would go on to win the ASP World Tour three times.

In a terrifying moment televised worldwide in 2015, he encountered a shark at the J-Bay Open in South Africa. He punched it off before being picked up by a response team.

“The first time it passed, it went through the leg rope, bit through the leg rope and then, when the wave came back, it came back and went again at the board,” Fanning told WHO that year. “That was probably the scariest, what everyone saw when it came back, and to see it brush past me and go for the board again, yeah, it was pretty wild.”